I have a question for readers out there who have experience with executive sponsor programs. These programs exist to create and sustain executive dialogs leading to relationships of trust between vendor and customer that, in turn, increase the vendor’s influence as demonstrated by a growing share of the customer’s wallet.

Some account managers I know prefer to create formal one-to-one relationships by getting the customer to officially assign a counterpart to the designated executive sponsor. One of these was curious recently to know how many others in his company had taken the same approach.

Other account managers deploy a one-to-several, fluid sponsor relationship in a strategy I’ll call “A little touch of Harry in the night,” borrowing from a scene in Shakespeare’s King Henry V. In this scene, Harry (aka Henry V) circulates among the troops before battle to get a sense of their morale and commitment.

So when you have an executive sponsor with limited bandwidth, is it better to match him or her to one customer executive and build a deep relationship? Or is it better to play the field and meet as many customer executives and senior management as possible, and listen to the customer more widely?

I am collecting anecdotal perspectives and, in return, will share them.

Nancy Heifferon, Consultant
Nancy.Heifferon@phelongroup.com